College Essay: Survey - Assistance Needed

[Spolodaface]

87 entries so far! Great work. Though I did post on Gametrailers and Hitmanforum so that contributed. I'm aiming for 100 so any more would be great.

 

[Spolodaface]

In my opinion, I think that a paper on the place of female characters in gaming would be really interesting way to go with your topic, and your survey would probably give good data on how to proceed.

I'm considering changnig my question to "How is Race and Gender represented in video games? A study of the role, function and implementation of diversity in video games." in light of this comment.

 

[sleepwalkingpolarbear]

Done and dusted! I am ashamed I don't know as many heroines as I do heroes, how sexist of me!

Same as myself.

 

[Spolodaface]

I need just 6 more people to answer the survey!

 

[dukethepcdr]

Nice survey. I found it interesting to see how many of the heroes and games I could recognize by the pictures. You had an interesting mix of familiar and more obscure games in there. The only thing I'd recommend to you would be to add one more question at the end. You asked if the respondant was "happy" with how heroes and heroines are represented in games, but you didn't give any space for them to express what they are happy or not happy about it.

To answer the question, I would say that there are far too many games in which the hero or heroine is too narrowly defined and in which the character is too much of a stereotype. The games where the player is allowed to customize the hero or heroine and to make decisions as to what the character will do next (sometimes even what the character will say to NPCs) are far superior to the first group of games.

To illustrate, let me give a couple of examples of the extremes of the two types of games. On the one hand, you have games like Call of Duty where you play (in the solo camaign) one private (with various names depending on which COD game you are playing). You have no options to customize this character. On top of that, the character has such a thin backstory and is so uninteresting that although I've played most of the COD games, I couldn't name any of the soliders I've played to save my life. As much fun as the COD games are, they are actually quite linear and you are given little choice in what to do next.

On the other hand, you have games like Oblivion where you have lots and lots of choices. You can pick the sex, race, appearance, name, starting abilities, etc. of your hero/heroine. There is a main plot, but once you get out of the dungeon, it's totally up to you whether you follow it or not. You could start over in Oblivion a dozen times, and not play the same game twice. You can even adjust the difficulty of the game at any point you want to. Games like this let you truly take ownership and have an emotional connection to your hero as they are pretty much your own creation.

Games like COD represent what I hate about what so many games do with heroes while games like Oblivion represent what I like about what a few games do with them.

 

[dukethepcdr]

Done and dusted! I am ashamed I don't know as many heroines as I do heroes, how sexist of me!

Don't feel too ashamed, it's not all our fault. Lets face it folks, there simply aren't as many memorable, "household name" video game heroines as there are heroes. That's the fault of the game publishers for mostly putting out games with male heroes. True, if more of the games with heroines sold better, it would help. However, of the games I've played that do feature heroines, very few of them have had truly memorable ones. Most games with heroines could have just as easliy had heroes instead as the sex of the main character seldom has much of an impact on the story in so many games. A perfect example is Metroid. Up until they revealed that Samus was a girl in the death animation in Metroid, I would have never guessed it by playing the game. In the few times when the fact that the main character is a girl does affect the plot, they tend to pound you over the head with "girl power" crap so much it gets annoying. Honestly, I don't think having girls being the main characters of action games works very well anyway. All to often, it comes off as gimmicky with no real compelling reason for it.

 

[Spolodaface]

Awesome. I've met my quota now!

Mods can lock this topic as there's no use now i've got all the results I need.

Thanks guys, you've been a great help. I'll let you know once i've published my essay and the survey results.

That's a survey of 100 people

 

[Iron Mal]

Just done it (although I've just now read that you have all the results that you need), hope it's still useful for you.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Maybe you should edit your original post and take out the link. I just wasted ten minutes doing it before I saw you had all the results you needed.

 

[DiamondJim]

That was a very nice survey! Glad to have helped. Surprised at how few heroines/retro games I couldn't identify... =/